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It is the case today that increasing numbers of modern Westerners,
Americans and ‘Christian’ clergy are following the way blazed by Deists and
other “Enlightenment” thinkers such as Thomas Paine who saw Science as a
pathway to a new spirituality, one that would replace the outdated and
unscientific Revealed Word perspective.

In keeping with the enlightened scientific view, Paine believed
that a free and just government could not exist simultaneously with Christianity. For Paine, the Deists veneration of Science
and man’s Omniscient Reason was the only true religion. Paine provided Americans in the 1790s with
what Deists of the 1730s provided England: a reason for rejecting the Revealed
Word in favor of Science and Reason (the mind of man).

Undermining the Revealed Word through corrosive criticism together
with ruthless ridicule, scoffing and mocking was the first goal of Deists. The second was to advance an alternative
religion based on Science, one that prefigured and paved the way for the occult
New Age scientific pantheism overtaking America today and advocated by evolutionary
Christians such as Teilhard de Chardin, Michael Dowd, and John Polkinghorne
with his sophisticated two-aspect monism conception.

“All the corruptions that
have taken place in theology and in religion,” said Paine, “have been produced by admitting what man
calls revealed religion.” Rational
religion, on the other hand, derives from an examination of nature, especially
the careful study of celestial bodies. (The Making of the New Spirituality,
James A. Herrick, p 101)

In a section of “The Age of
Reason” entitled “Comparing
Christianism with Pantheism,” Paine recommends a scientific alternative to
Christianity. Though he labels this new
scientific faith Deism, it is a brand of pantheism that locates the Divine
Substance of God within nature.

Paine compared Science as the study of the “structure of the
heavens” with various non-Christian “systems
of religion.” In this light, Science
is “the progression of knowledge” and
the one true source of natural religion.

In another section entitled “Advantages of Life in a Plurality of
Worlds,” Paine explains that the pantheist conception of an infinite space
filled with divine life led him, as it had Giordano Bruno, to speculate that
other intelligent species exist in the cosmos, which through contemplation, can
provide a sense of wonder lending itself to worship. (ibid)

For Paine and other Deists, Science was the basis for a new
spirituality: pantheism.

Pantheism first appeared in
the pre-flood world when antediluvians believed Lucifer’s lie that the
personal, transcendent God had emptied Himself into creation and no longer
existed except as an impersonal creative force within nature that allowed them
to evolve into gods after their death.

This notion appears
throughout history in a variety of guises originating in the post-flood world
in the age-old technology of alchemy and its magical meaning: the ancient
Egyptian Hermetic principle of the macrocosm’s correlation with the microcosm,
“As above, so below” symbolized by the Ouroboros – the Great Chain of Being.

From the Renaissance to our
own time, scientific pantheism packaged as biological and spiritual theories of
evolutionary emergence or change, pre-existing or spontaneously generated
matter theories, multiverse conceptions (i.e., Paine’s infinite space filled
with divine life), Teilhard’s Omega Point, Michael Dowd’s pantheist New Theism
and Polkinghorne’s two aspect monism, has swept the post-Christian West and
America, even boldly entering into the whole body of the Church.

The Return of Pantheism

In “God
and the Knowledge of Reality,” the eminent Catholic scholar and historian,
Thomas Molnar (1921-2010), reveals that pantheism was revived during the
Renaissance by Christian mystics and scholars who had discovered Hermetic magic
and mystical Jewish Cabala with its Sephiroth (Great Chain of Being) and like
Pico della Mirandola argued that pantheist hermetic magic---the divine science
or Magic Way of reaching divine status and psychic powers is the best proof of
the divinity of Christ:

“…by the time of the Renaissance the esoteric texts of the first
centuries A.D. had acquired in scholarly and humanist circles an unparalleled
prestige, confronting as equals the texts held sacred by the church. In Pico’s
estimation….there is no science that would prove for us Christ’s divinity
better than magic and the Cabala.” (pp. 78-79)

From the Renaissance to the
so-called Age of Reason on through to our own, scientific pantheists have been steadily
working toward the goal of overhauling the Revealed Word, beginning with the
book of Genesis, the book of beginnings divinely revealed to Moses for our
edification and eternal salvation, in order to harmonize it with scientific pantheism
and evolution.

American
anthropologist, educator, philosopher, and natural science writer Loren Eisely
(1907-1977) explains that the ancient taproot of modern evolution and its’
constant companion emergence or continuous change, is the mystical pantheist
doctrine known as the Great Chain of Being:

“All that the Great Chain of Being
actually needed to become a full-fledged evolutionary theory was the
introduction into it of the conception of time in vast quantities....It
demanded, in other words, a universe not made but being made continuously…. As
we look back upon the long reign of the Scale of Being, whose
effects...persisted well into the nineteenth century, we may observe that the
seed of evolution lay buried in the traditional metaphysic which indeed
prepared the Western mind for its acceptance.” (Darwin’s Century,
Eisley, pp. 9-10)

In its’
original post-flood conception the Great Chain of Being was a static system
representing the mind of the Eternal Absolute (creative force), or Void with
Buddhist and some Hindu systems. According to this ancient occult
metaphysic, the entire universe, all life, and even all of the gods and human
beings and everything else came about by a process of emanation from the
Eternal Absolute.

The 'New' and 'Scientific' Great Chain of Being

Underlying the modern
scientific notion that life was brought here by way of asteroids or Space
Brothers is the multiverse hypothesis, a theory proposed by David Deutsch in
his book, “The Fabric of Reality.”

Deutsch’s theory recasts
the Great Chain of Being (Orobouros) into the idea of an infinite number of
parallel universes in the vain hope that in at least one of them, conscious
life and order arose by pure chance from the mixing together of non-life
bearing chemicals, meaning that life created itself and then through
evolutionary emergence (alchemical change) over vast ages, primitive life and
then finally mankind finally appeared.

Multiverse speculations are
grounded in a two-fold neo-pantheist vision. First, that living beings created
themselves from pre-existing or spontaneously generated matter at the Big Bang,
and second, the age-old technology of alchemy and its magical meaning: the
ancient Egyptian Hermetic principle of the pantheist conception of the
macrocosm’s correlation with the microcosm symbolized by
the Ouroboros – the Great Chain of Being, cosmic tree of life or with Darwin
the tree of life.

In modern thought, the Great Chain of Being or Ouroboros ‘above’
(Void, Brahman) corresponds to a number of different mystical planets (i.e., Kolob), worlds,
dimensions or astral planes and sub-planes comprising the habitations,

“(of all) supernatural entities, the locale of gods
and demons, the void where the thoughtforms dwell, the region inhabited by
spirits of the air and other elements, and the various heavens and hells with
their angelic and demonic hosts....With the help of ritual procedures, trained
persons believe that they can ‘rise on the planes,’ and experience these
regions in full awareness.” (”Beyond the Body: The Human Double and the
Astral planes, Benjamin Walker, 1974, pp. 117-8)

The Ouroboros is well-known around the world in its’ many pantheist
traditions:

“References to this reality are the Dreaming of the Australian
Aborigines, the Spirit-world of Shamanism, the Duart of the ancient Egyptians,
the Bardo (Intermediate State) of the Tibetans, the Imaginal world of Islamic
Esotericism – e.g. the Barzakh (Interworld) or of Suhrawardi and the Mithal
(Imaginal realm) of Ibn Arabi – the Universe of Asiyah of some Kabbalists, or
of Yetzirah according to others. Other descriptions are the Nervo degree of the
Physical State of Theon, the Astral or 2nd Prakritic plane (corresponding to
the Linga Sharira or Subtle or Astral body) and the Kama (Desire-Plane) of
Blavatsky, the Astral Plane of the Adyar school of Theosophy and of popular
occultism, Rudolf Steiner’s “Soul World”; and the Vital and Subtle Physical
described by Sri Aurobindo and Mirra. These are just a few of the innumerable
descriptions of this plane of existence.” (The Astral Plane, kheper.net)

“…science is a potent weapon against Christianity. It is a tool which can be used by anybody — including
Christians — who grab and employ it.”

Used in pursuit of what
though?

Before answering that
question it is vitally important that scientific pantheism be separated from the
science made possible by the Biblical worldview positing a living, personal
Holy God who, though maintaining all things here in the space-time dimension,
does not dwell here but outside of the space-time dimension in the 3rd heaven. In other words, His substance does not
comprise the space-time dimension as all pantheist systems hold, thus man has
no share of His substance.

Only within ancient and
modern pantheist systems (natural science) positing the distribution of the
substance of God throughout the space-time dimension can it be held that life
arose from spontaneously generated non-life bearing chemicals pregnant with the
emergent possibility of life or arose somewhere else and was accidentally brought
here by asteroids or on purpose by Space Brothers.

Now we arrive at the answer
to “in pursuit of what?” which is really the source of the spiritual pathology
underlying the return of modern Westerners, Americans and countless priests to
scientific pantheism and its primary doctrine, evolutionary emergence:

Men no longer desire to be God’s spiritual image-bearers but
rather liberated ‘free spirits’ boasting: I AM I; I came from Myself.

Liberation of ‘self’ begins
with Darwinism because it removes God from biology. Darwinism is the magical key to liberation
of ‘self’ from the personal, living God of Revelation:

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he
him; male and female created he them.” Genesis 1:27

For fifteen hundred years,
Christendom and then later Protestant America had followed St. Augustine (AD
354-430) in affirming that as all men are the spiritual image-bearers of the
transcendent Triune God then it logically follows that each person is a trinity
of being — of soul, spirit, and body:

“The essence of the human is not the body, but the soul. It is the soul
alone that God made in his own image and the soul that he loves....For the sake
of the soul...the Son of God came into the world....” (Incomplete Work on
Matthew, Homily 25, Ancient Christian Devotional, Oden and Crosby, p. 153)

Man is God’s spiritual
image-bearer, and said the brilliant French economist, statesman, and author
Frederic Bastiat, this is the gift from God which includes the physical,
intellectual and moral life:

“He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has
put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By application of our
faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use
them. Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty,
property — this is man (and) these three gifts from God precede all human
legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist
because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life,
liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the
first place.” (How Evil Works, David Kupelian, p. 8)

Vishal Mangalwadi, India’s
foremost Christian scholar observes that the unique concept of man as God’s
spiritual image-bearer gave birth to the “belief
in the unique dignity of human beings,” and this is,

“...the force that created Western civilization, where citizens do not
exist for the state but the state exists for the individuals. Even kings,
presidents, prime ministers, and army generals cannot be allowed to trample
upon an individual and his or her rights.” (Truth and Transformation: A
Manifesto for Ailing Nations, pp. 12-13)

But from the Renaissance to
our own age, Americans and Westerners no longer desirous of being God’s spiritual
image-bearers have been, as dogs returning to not just stale but ancient vomit,
liberating ‘self’ from the living, Holy God by embracing ‘scientific’ pantheism
and evolution. And this is the source
of the spiritual cancer destroying our nation that politics absolutely cannot
fix.